This Economist article on how major league sports remains pretty much recession-proof sent me looking for Babe Ruth’s famous quote in response to a reporter informing him that the salary he was holding out for in 1930 — $80,000 — was $5,000 more than then-President Herbert Hoover made:
What the hell has Hoover got to do with it? Besides, I had a better year than he did.
What I didn’t realize was that Ruth, in addition to being an economist, was also a counterinsurgency theorist:
It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.
Especially if they’ve got the hearts and minds of the people on their side, as Ruth certainly did.